


A Bottomless Well of Jealousy

by iteration



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Competence, First Time, Isolation, Jealousy, Lust, M/M, Possessiveness, Pretentious Chapter Titles, emotional deprivation, fixit fic, narratology, novels, paintings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7597291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iteration/pseuds/iteration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein John and Harold eventually attempt communication despite being wildly incompetent at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bottomless Well of Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dodificus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodificus/gifts).



> Soooo I watched the series finale and I had a lot of feelings. This is sort of a fixit fic if you squint, but mostly it’s an ode to the s1-s2 Reese/Finch dynamic.

PROLOGUE

_“So they’re two vigilantes, highly competent, shrouded in mystery, their real names unknown even to each other. And they prevent murder.”_

_"Yes."_

_"And in the course of preventing murder, these two vigilantes… Have adopted a dog together._

_“Yes.”_

_“And at one point they stole a baby."_

_"I _swear_ I'm not making this up."_

_"Hmm. I see why you thought they would interest me."_

 

CHAPTER 1: ARCADIA

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
9:04 a.m.  
June 5th, 2013

“ _To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole; but ever since the painting had vanished from under me I’d felt drowned and extinguished by vastness — not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm’s reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensities, connections missed, things lost and never found, and my painting swept away on that powerful current and drifting out there somewhere: a tiny fragment of spirit, faint spark bobbing on a dark sea,_ ” John recites.

“That’s quite a run-on sentence.”

John sets down the manuscript. “It’s all like that.”

“It’s like someone talking about their soul.”

“Or about their purpose.”

“What is it from?”

"This.” John gestures towards the manuscript, an stack of eight hundred single-sided, unbound pages tied together with a rubber band. “A woman handed this to me on Monday. Five foot, caucasian, green eyes, dark brown hair. Very good looking.”

Finch looks up from his terminal. “A strange person handed you a mysterious stack of paper on Monday?”

“She wasn’t a threat,” John responds. “I read it, it’s a just novel.”

Finch frowns thoughtfully. “And we had the Stevens situation so early on Monday, I can see how you wouldn’t have found the time to mention it.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just a novel.”

“Well.” Finch blinks owlishly and turns back to his monitor. “I’ll run it through text analysis regardless.”

Paranoid or controlling: the Harold Finch guessing game. Though maybe, John thinks, the game isn’t limited to those two options. Finch might be paranoid, or controlling, _or_ aware of something John doesn’t know. Or - a forth possibility - he’s maintaining his carefully constructed aura of mystery.

The thing about Finch… The thing about working with Finch, John thinks, is that it has become both remarkably routine, and inescapably peculiar. John and Finch are isolated, and in close proximity, for countless hours, days, weeks. Even as a field agent John was never alone with one other person for so long. He and Finch are near each other for so many hours of the day that Reese can tell the time by the slight shadow of Finch’s facial hair. He knows which suit Finch tends to wear on which day of the week, knows by Finch’s movements when he starts thinking about painkillers, knows that Finch gets his hair cut every four weeks exactly.

And they don’t discuss the reality of their closeness. John doesn’t expect they ever will. They discuss their mission, they might even discuss their purpose, but they do not discuss this, and they definitely do not discuss the fact that no matter how many hours they spend working together, they choose to spend their off-work time together as well.

“Mr Reese?”

John starts. Distractedly, he’s set his hand down on Finch’s shoulder.

“We have a new number.”

John looks down at the monitor. A teenager in a green button-down shirt stares out at him.

“Julia Bondarenko, 23. Born in Ukraine, American citizenship since 2005, and that’s… all I can find about her.”

“Good passport photo.”

“Yes. Perhaps with facial recognition we’ll know where to start looking for her.”

“Hmm.”

Maybe, John muses, things would be different if their days had some sort of routine to them. The repetition might wear them down, and they might become bored enough to think about each other and this life they share. But every day at work with Finch is more random than the day before.

Today, John infiltrates the Consulate General of Ukraine, commandeers a helicopter to conduct surveillance, and bribes a remarkably good-looking ex-convict. By six o’clock, John wishes he could say that the day was shaping up to be an unusually active one, but he can’t. It’s only been a pointlessly exhausting day so far. They’re certainly no closer to knowing where to find Julia Bondarenko, and there is nothing unusual about this level of activity.

Almost bored, John heads to Golden Szechuan. Just as he’s reaching to pay for takeout, he gets half a dozen text messages. Two of them are from a number John doesn’t recognize, but the other four are from the ex-convict. Finally. They might be able to find the number today.

“Finch?” John asks, though he already knows Finch is listening. He always knows when Finch is listening.

Through John’s earpiece, Finch sounds drained. “Yes, Mr Reese?”

“You’re seeing this?”

“Yes. You’ve been texted our number’s current whereabouts and address.”

“Yeah.” Reese grabs the takeout bags in one hand and his phone in the other. “So I’m thinking I’ll drop dinner off with you and -“

“And Logan Pierce wants you to be his plus one at a Met event tomorrow.”

John stops short. “He…?”

The texts from the number he couldn’t recognize are from self-made billionaire Logan Pierce. The same Logan Pierce whom Finch once described as ‘just curious enough to be dangerous.’ John doesn’t know how he got this phone number.

“Yes, you are right to be concerned - there is no Met event tomorrow.”

“Finch, something’s wrong with -“ _our security_ , he means to add, but Finch cuts him off.

“Apologies. I shouldn’t comment on your personal life, Mr Reese. Only I was unaware that you’ve kept in contact and -”

“We haven’t.” John cuts him off.

“Ah.”

“I don’t know how he got this number.”

“But it would be completely understandable if you wished to -“

“You’re not hearing me, Finch. _I don’t know how he got this number._ I didn’t give it to him.”

“Ah.” Somehow he can hear Finch’s hands pause over his keyboard. “Our security protocols -”

“Look, I’m dropping dinner off with you.” John cuts him off again. “And then I’m heading to Julia Bondarenko’s location.“

Three full seconds of silence tick by. “Yes. And - for now, backup security protocols.”

Which means that John throws out his phone’s sim card, and expects radio silence overnight.

*

Radio silence, John knows from experience, is a challenge after the first four hours or so. It’s not the absence of companionship - though that is also unpleasant - it’s the absence of distraction from his own thoughts.

Once, six month before, John and Finch didn’t have a number for two days. It was during the darkest, greyest part of January. The small amount of blueish light that managed to filter through the library windows had turned everything inside into a frozen and inhospitable cloister, and by the afternoon of the second day, John had been so ludicrously bored that he’d found cleaning rags and started dusting the library. And then as a second act, he’d hunted down dishwashing soap, and washed all the dishes he could find.

He'd stood at the sink and wondered why the library had hot water, which had started him thinking about long-term planning, which somehow devolved into thinking about partnership, and then inevitably, about Finch. Picking up a fork and looking at it, he’d suddenly been struck with a vivid memory of Finch holding a forkful of pad thai in one hand, and a glass of water in the other, but being unable to eat or drink because he couldn’t stop laughing about something Bear had just done. And John had looked up, and seen Finch looking at him. It had almost been like he’d had been responding to John’s thoughts. And before John could even anticipate it, he’d felt a wave of fondness crash over him.

Then they’d gotten a new number, and the spell had been broken. John hasn’t thought about his fondness for Finch since.

*

He Julia Bondarenko, in silence, all the way from her catering job to her apartment in Brooklyn. She’s very tall, and graceful, with hazel eyes, dark hair and an easy smile. John clones her phone.

At around three o’clock in the morning, reasonably certain Julia is sleeping, and desperate for something else to think about, John calls Finch from a public phone.

“Nine hours radio silence is a long time, Finch.”

“Yes.”

“Anything on your end?”

“I started reading the novel you left on my desk,” There are a few seconds of silence on the other end of the line. “But nothing new regarding our number. We won’t find anything more now, Mr Reese.”

“Copy that. I’m twenty minutes away. I’ll drop in and then head back to the loft.”

“No need, Mr Reese.”

“Good night, Finch. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

There is another pause over the line, and John knows Finch is awkwardly readjusting his glasses. He smiles widely at the thought. Belatedly, he realizes, Finch is probably watching him over some security feed or other. He looks up and tries to find a camera, to smile straight at it.

Finch clears his throat. “The same to you, Mr Reese.”

 

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
8:51 a.m.  
June 6th, 2013

In the morning, the weather is spectacular, and John is at the library a little earlier than usual with coffee, tea, doggie danishes, and a new sim card. At his desk, Finch does not look up when John appears, but John can see that his facial expression is at its most blank, its most impassive. He is, however, wearing the waistcoat with the flecks of blue that most bring out his eyes.

John sets the tea down on Finch’s desk gently, and sees on it the manuscript he walked in with the day before.

“This is a very good novel, Mr Reese.” Finch says without looking up.

There’s a bookmark about halfway through.

“Finch? Did you… sleep?”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t read this overnight.”

John nods. “You got halfway through it by breaching the space-time continuum.”

“No. I read it intermittently while you were out yesterday,” Finch answers, inflectionless.

By lunchtime, John has obtained Julia Bondarenko’s schedule, which she keeps only on paper and in her handbag at all times. “Yeah she’s scheduled to work this evening at… this says… Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seven p.m.”

“Is she.” Finch makes a dissatisfied sound over the line. “Ah, I see. Here it is. There _is_ an event this evening. A viewing for major patrons - tickets are in the five figures.”

Reese continues to read out Julia's planner. “Tomorrow she has an event in Brooklyn… just two blocks from her apartment, that’s convenient for her. And then on Saturday…”

"Of course the difficulty is that none of my -" Finch says through a flurry of keyboard sounds. "Hm. None of my aliases are major patrons of the Met.”

“We should -“

“Yes, we should infiltrate the event this evening,“ Finch says, talking over him.

"Are we going to have to dress you up as a maintenance worker again?"

"That's a last-case scenario only, Mr Reese.“

 

CHAPTER 2: LE DIABLE AU CORPS

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
12:30 p.m.  
June 6th, 2013

“I could accept Logan Pierce’s invitation.”

“I beg your pardon?” Harold blurts out the words. Strangely, his brains seems to stop working for several seconds. He can tell John is answering but at first it only sounds like gibberish.

“You know,” Reese is saying when Harold’s brain comes back online. “Instead of creating invitations out of thin air or whatever it is you do to get us into places. I could go in as his plus one like he asked. You don’t like undercover work anyway, right?”

Harold yields to the logic of the situation, though the inclusion of Logan Pierce adds several variables to their investigation. The unpredictability - both of the situation, and of the man - irks him.

And if they’re not going undercover, he’s going to have to make adjustments to Reese’s tuxedo.

“I didn’t think Logan Pierce rated a change of clothes,” comments Reese.

“The tuxedo is not for _him_ , Mr Reese.”

Reese pulls off his suit jacket. “I suppose the Met is no place for second-rate tailoring.”

“Precisely.”

So Harold watches as Reese unbuckles his gun holster. He has to stretch to reach the clasp, and his shirt rides up. Just above his waistband, Harold can see the scar from where Evans shot him.

“Mr Reese, I… Sewing supplies.”

For as long as he can remember, Harold’s feelings have been known quantities. Temporary states. After the violence of his teenage infatuations his feelings were always… always _endurable_. Harold would see couples smiling at each other in the park, and something sour and tight would settle in his chest. A longing for uncomplicated connection. He didn’t really care about those couples; he only yearned for respite from his loneliness.

And he’s been infatuated before. It all seems so distant, now, but he remembers the sleepless nights, the atypical behaviour. Once, in college, he’d met a fellow undergrad — his name had been Julian — at a poetry reading. Harold hadn’t even meant to attend the reading, he’d only been on the hunt for coffee, but later he’d written verse about the sweater Julian been wearing. The interaction had been so short, the man had only smiled at Harold and offered him homemade cookies, but the frayed edges of his sweater had somehow seemed indescribably poignant, and Harold had daydreamed about him for months. In retrospect, there may have been something in the cookies, but, Harold thinks, that particular infatuation was very representative of the whole of his emotional life. A longing for the _idea_ of emotions, rather than any real attachment.

But _this_.

The first time Harold saw John Reese was in a photograph attached to a CIA personnel file. Unremarkable and, frankly, unremarked by Harold. He hadn’t given much thought to it.

 _I’m hardly giving any thought to this_ , Harold tells himself savagely. He has to think of John as dispassionately as possible, he reminds himself at regular intervals. He has to think of John only as staff, only as an agent.

“You sure this needs any alterations, Finch?” Reese asks when Harold reappears with sewing supplies. He’s wearing the tuxedo together with a white shirt, top button still undone, and the black Oxfords Harold got him last December.

Reese looks spectacular. He looks - he looks unreal. He looks _photoshopped_.

“No.” Harold says, and promptly turns on his heels.

 

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
7:00 p.m.  
June 6th, 2013

One of the reasons Harold objected, years ago, to Nathan’s venture into vigilantism was this: there are no instructions. When there’s a situation and you don’t know how to deal with it, you can’t call your handler to ask them what to do. You don’t have a team of people who wrote the ethics guide and contingency plan for your organization. You’re just winging it _all the time_.

Some days at the library are hectic but straightforward, and Harold sits at his desk and feels like someone who knows what they’re doing. But some days, like today, are slow and strange, and Harold feels like an amateur. He’s always been in charge of making his own decisions, but for most of his life, they were programming decisions, and for most of those programming decisions, he had the option of calling Nathan to talk them through.

But now his monitors are full of the feeds from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s security cameras, and Harold doesn’t have that option. Nathan would say that they’re beautiful images, Harold thinks. As surveillance feeds go. On one of them, across the street, pointing at the museum, the sun is falling just below the horizon. On another, pointing at 5th Avenue, Reese is at the bottom of the steps, scanning the crowd, in the strange light between sunset and darkness. A gust of wind blows through his hair.

Harold has a sudden urge to tell Reese to come back, to tell him they'll find another way, that he doesn't have to go to spend the evening with Logan Pierce. _Take me away from the library_ , Harold thinks. _Talk to me_. Being on the inside looking out is tiring.

“There is no unusual activity within the museum, Mr Reese. And Logan Pierce hasn’t arrived.”

He watches Reese make his way into the entrance hall, give his name to a clerk and make his way to a private gallery on the second level. When he gets there, there is a crowd, but the light is soft and it’s very quiet.

Reese looks more like a security guard than a guest, and only more so when he ever-so-slightly-conspicuously scans the room. He isn’t carrying a weapon but he looks like he _should_ be.

When Reese cranes his neck to get a good look at the room, the fabric of his suit jacket stretches slightly across his shoulders, and when his muscles shift, from the nape of his neck to his shoulder blades, the movement goes all the way down to the base of his spine. A very slight breeze lifts the edge of the jacket to brush it over his backside. Harold thinks, the image quality of the museum’s security cameras is very good.

He’s distracted enough that he completely misses Logan Pierce’s entrance. Logan Pierce, self-made billionaire college dropout, founder and CEO of friendczar dot com, has dull skin and scraggly blonde hair. But he is in irritatingly good health, and is wearing a well-cut suit.

“John,” Logan says to Reese’s shoulder.

Reese doesn’t immediately respond; he turns, and looks Logan up and down assessingly. Only after a moment does Harold see him put his hands in his pockets and nod. “Hello.”

“Thanks for…” Logan makes a vague gesture towards Reese, and back towards himself. “You know. Thanks for coming.”

“Sure, Pierce.“

Logan grins widely. “Logan,” he corrects.

“Sure,” Reese counters. “ _Logan_.” The tone of his voice is only slightly ironic, like he might be expressing irritation, or he might be flirting. Finch spares a moment to wish he’d agreed to infiltrate the museum dressed up as a maintenance worker. Watching this is just tiresome.

On the feed, Logan shifts his weight from side to side and looks up at Reese through his eyelashes. “ _John_ ” he drawls in an attempt to imitate Reese’s tone.

“You have a social networking empire but you couldn’t find a date,” Reese deadpans, his expression still somewhere in between irritation and flirting.

Logan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, _wow_.”

“What can I say, _Logan_ ,” Reese gestures for a waiter. “I felt sorry for you.”

"Saving my life and _agreeing to be my pity date_. You're a generous man, John.”

Logan Pierce’s power, decides Harold, his strength, is to make himself the most annoying human anyone has ever met. He is _so irritating_. Like a gnat constantly reappearing no matter what’s been done to make it go away.

A waiter presents Reese and Logan with a tray full of — Harold would guess Moscato. Reese picks up two glasses and hands one of them to Logan. “I can be generous,” he says.

“Oh?” Logan tilts his head. “Or is Harold the one being generous?”

He is _so irritating_.

Reese, Harold can see, is thrown by the question, and does not respond. Logan sips his wine in a manner that can only be described as ‘triumphant.’ Harold cannot imagine what he’s playing at.

He thinks: Julia Bondarenko is either in mortal danger or she is planning to kill someone. Logan Pierce is sending text messages to a number he shouldn’t have. And now, strictly speaking, they’re investigating a number. But Reese is on a date.

“How’d you get my phone number, _Logan_?” Reese asks.

“It’s sort of a long story, _John_ , but the short version goes: your signal always goes through a cell phone tower, and I have many useful friends.”

 

CHAPTER 3: LOGAN PIERCE, SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRE

I have many useful friends. Some of them are NSA-phone-tapping, data-analyzing friends. It occurs to me that using those friends is a really impolite way to get John Reese’s attention, but I want to show off. Also I’m on a deadline.

Anyway: why is John Reese at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Here goes: one day, I met this author. At an event. You know the sort of boring event where you wear something some stylist spent weeks deciding on, where there aren’t enough canapés, and where the speakers always have too many titles and not enough wit? One of those events. So yeah, there was this author, and we got talking.

“So let me get this straight,” she said, after I told her about John and Harold over a glass of adequate rosé. “They’re two vigilantes, highly competent, shrouded in mystery, their real names unknown even to each other. And they prevent murder.”

"Yes."

"And in the course of preventing murder, these two vigilantes… “ Her sharp eyes narrowed at me. “Have adopted a dog together.”

“That's right.”

“And at one point they stole a baby." Her tone went flat.

And honestly? I totally get how insane that sounds, but come on! "I _swear_ I'm not making this up."

"I see why you thought they would interest me.”

I love it when beautiful women tell me I’m right. “Thrilled you approve,” I told her.

“And remind me - what’s _your_ motivation here?“

 

CHAPTER 4: THE GOLDFINCH

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
8:02 p.m.  
June 6th, 2013

“How’d you get my phone number, _Logan_?”

“It’s a long story, _John_ , but here’s the short version: your signal always goes through a cell phone tower, and I have some unusual friends.”

Of course he does. How very unpleasant. Obviously, the weakness in Harold’s security protocols has always been that someone might have a _lot_ of money and energy. But, Harold thinks, having the reality of it in front of him is mortifying.

“And why am I here?” Reese is inexplicably carrying on with this conversation, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the number.

“You’re here to, uh -“ Logan seems to be scanning the crowd. “To look at some art.”

When he sees that Logan, on top of everything else, isn’t intending to give John a straightforward answer, Harold removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. This isn't - there must be a better way. His reaction to Logan are getting in the way of his work.

Harold checks on Julia Bondarenko's position. She’s tall and graceful, without attracting attention, and she walks from guest to guest, offering hors d’oeuvres. She's only a few paces away from Reese, he sees, and Reese has her in his peripheral vision.

So things are under control for the time being. Harold takes the opportunity to turn away from the security feeds. He has an idea.

Long ago, Harold had - like Nathan before him - tried to help numbers on his own, and he’d quickly realized that there were too many things to do at once. For example, surveillance often had to be done simultaneously with, say, the creation of aliases. So he explored several options and eventually settled on hiring someone. But one of the other options had been: developing an alert system within The Machine, to help him with the everyday surveillance. The alert system would have let him know when significant things were happening - either visual or auditory - over security feeds.

Surely, Harold thinks, he has the prototype still… “Ah! here we are.”

“Finch?”

Startled, Harold tabs back to the security feeds. Logan hasn’t reappeared, and Reese is raising an eyebrow at one of the cameras. “Mr Reese. Ms Bondarenko is about twenty feet to your left.”

“Spotted her, Finch. Everything okay over there?”

“Yes. May I ask why you haven't bypassed smalltalk and simply told Mr Pierce the real reason you accepted his invitation?”

“Only fair. He hasn’t given me the real reason he invited me.”

“You believe he has a hidden motive?”

“You don’t?”

“People have been known to go to the museum without hidden motives before, Mr Reese.”

Reese blinks. “You think -“

Logan suddenly reappears with two glasses before Reese can finish his thought. “So where is your better half tonight, John?” he asks, handing Reese his wine.

Harold switches on the alert system and removes his earpiece before Reese answers.

Blessed silence surrounds him. The only interruption is the very faint sound of Bear sleeping on his doggie bed.

He cheerfully works on background checks of Julia’s colleagues for several minutes before his computer pings. When Harold puts his earpiece back in and looks up, he sees a man calling for everyone’s attention.

The man speaks into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s private viewing of a Dutch masterpiece. Please remember that flash photography is never permitted within the museum, and make your way through the doors on my left.”

Finch watches as a door opens to - inexplicably, bafflingly - reveal the subject of the novel sitting on his desk: _Het puttertje_ , by Carel Fabritius. In English: _The Goldfinch_.

“Mr Reese -“

Reese doesn’t let him finish. Sounding deceptively nonchalant, he turns to Logan and says, “ _Logan_. Explain to me why I was handed a manuscript for a book about a really specific painting earlier this week, and now _happen_ to be standing in front of that exact painting.”

“What makes you think I have anything to do with that?”

“I’ve met you.”

“Astute, John. Very.” Pierce turns and signals behind himself. “Meet my friend Donna.”

A tiny woman appears at Pierce’s side. Five foot, caucasian, green eyes, dark brown hair. Very good looking.

Reese tenses. “You gave me a manuscript the other day.”

The woman, small and inscrutable, looks up at him. Face unreadable, like a sphinx, she looks up at Reese, who is twice her size, with no evidence of caution or wariness. “I did.”

“Credit where credit’s due, Mr Reese,” Harold says through the comm. “You were right. Pierce _did_ have a hidden motive.”

Reese looks up at the security camera, and then checks on Julia Bondarenko’s position. “Explain yourself, Logan, but do it fast. I have things to do”

Pierce’s eyes widen. “Oh. _Oh_. That’s why - you’re here for someone else.”

“I said, fast.”

But Donna moves to stand right in front of Logan. “John. May I call you John? Logan gave me such a vivid description of you, that when I happened upon you on Monday I was certain it was you. I had a copy of my manuscript with me at the time and, on impulse, I just handed it to you. I suppose I felt like I knew who you were, and that it was unfair that you did not know who I was, so I gave you that part of me.”

“What’s this is about?” asks John.

“I asked Logan to arrange for us to meet again. He thinks you would make a wonderful subject for a novel, and I agree.”

John blinks once, twice, and - magnificently captured by the Met’s cameras - slowly brings his hand up to his earpiece.

“Finch?”

Harold sees Donna and Logan’s eyes flash. “Yes?”

“Are you hearing this?”

“Yes.” Harold feels… He feels exasperated, somehow. “Yes. And while I’m certain that writing a quality narrative is as much of an act of bravery, and saves people, just as much as what we do, Mr Reese, perhaps now is not _quite_ the time for our fictionalized joint biography.”

“Copy that.” And turning to Donna and Logan, Reese says “Finch says thanks, but no.”

Harold feels like he should have a microphone in his hands in order to drop it on the floor.

“And you?” Logan asks John, who has started to move in the direction of Julia Bondarenko.

“I have work to do.” He turns to Donna. “It was lovely to meet you, ma’am.”

 

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
11:05 p.m.  
June 6th, 2013

The Bondarenko situation is resolved quickly. The perpetrator is an ex-boyfriend of Julia’s who, when John apprehends him, only yells “I WANTED TO GIVE IT A GOOD ENDING, WHY WON’T SHE LET ME GIVE IT A GOOD ENDING” over and over. Odd. Julia seems utterly petrified of the man and when John hands him over to be handcuffed, Harold — for the briefest of moments — feels like they’ve done something good today.

Once the perpetrator is taken into custody and Ms Bondarenko has been assured that she is safe, Reese turns to an emergency exit and tells Harold he’s twenty minutes away.

“Understood, Mr Reese. Bear is impatient to see you.”

The night is still young, Finch thinks, the weather is lovely, and Bear has been cooped up all day. Perhaps a midnight stroll. Perhaps… perhaps even a refreshment later on.

But Logan is waiting for Reese when he exits the museum.

“Hey, John.”

“I’m not gonna be the subject of a novel, Logan.”

“That’s not — um.” Logan fidgets even more than usual, and that’s saying something. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Harold removes his earpiece.

 

CHAPTER 5: THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE

“Maybe you’re due for a change,” Logan suggests, once they’ve sat down. He waves his arms over the table. The table is made from — unless John is very much mistaken — bulletproof carbon fiber. Someone serves them drinks they didn’t order. “At least I wear different outfits sometimes.”

“Different outfits…?”

Logan leans into John’s space. “Even the occasional t-shirt.”

“What’s happening here, Logan?” John asks.

Logan drains his glass. “The truth is that I was never going to keep up with Facebook. My people are hammering out a liquidation deal as we speak, it’ll all be over on Monday. So -“ He gestures for another round. “I’m on a deadline, John.”

“You’re on a deadline.”

“If I’m going to take you out in the billionaire style to which you are accustomed, this is it. I’ve got about -“ he checks his watch. “Seventy-two hours left.”

John pauses, a jumble of disparate pieces of intel rearranging themselves behind his eyes. _Logan Pierce. Investor concerns. Liquidation deal. Glances. Libido._ And, overlaying all the pieces, John’s irritation.

He sits back. Sighs. “You couldn’t just ask a guy out on a date, huh?”

“Well, you know, John,“ Logan sets his fingertips on top of John’s. “Arguably, I did.”

 

CHAPTER 6: A BOTTOMLESS WELL OF JEALOUSY

Harold reads The Goldfinch in his armchair.

_The suddenness of the explosion had never left me, I was always looking for something to happen, always expecting it just out of the corner of my eye, certain configurations of people in public places could trigger it, a wartime urgency, someone cutting in front of me the wrong way or walking too fast at a particular angle was enough to throw me into tachycardia and trip-hammer panic, the kind that made me stumble for the nearest park bench._

Out of some long-forgotten college reflex, Finch reaches out for a pencil and underlines the quote. The suddenness of the explosion, indeed.

Once, Harold had a dream in which Reese was there, always there, whenever Harold turned, always slightly inside his space, always looking at him expectantly. Which, Harold thinks, describes every day he’s spent working with John Reese, but in his dream his offer felt different. In the dream, he knew, in the way that you know things in dreams, that Reese was just on the edge of making romantic advances. That something was stopping him, but, in the dream, it felt inevitable. It felt like only a matter of time. And in the dream, Harold felt ashamed, because he had to tell Reese that things could never be that way between them. He didn’t know why he had to tell him that, he just knew that was the way things were. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

It was a long dream, a long, painful, miserable dream. Because Dream-Harold couldn’t stop liking the way Reese looked at him, and wanting him to never, ever stop, but he was also certain that this was something he was supposed to resist. That he couldn’t give in.

_Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. […] But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bed sheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born — never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything._

Finch, who had been pleased with the manuscript until that moment, suddenly finds himself choking on air at the words _never to have hoped for anything_. His eyes prickle.

Bear trots up to his armchair.

“Ah,” he croaks. “Bear.”

Bear sets his head on Finch’s lap.

“Bear -“ _where is your ball?_ he means to ask. But his voice breaks, and he suddenly finds himself considering Bear’s mass of pillows and blankets. A canine life is so straightforward, Harold thinks. Maybe if he lays down in the doggie bed and closes his eyes, the complexities of the world will fade away.

Sometimes, Finch takes his clothes off at night, catches sight of himself in a mirror, and thinks of Reese's smooth, honed muscles, and he feels… He feels scarred, and old, and he can't help thinking of Reese's James Bond-like former career. He must have... Reese must have worked with handlers far more experienced, and gone on missions with colleagues far more photogenic. Finch thinks — it’s not just that Logan Pierce is an irritating individual. It’s more than that — Logan Pierce represents something Harold didn’t even know could be there: a jealousy so overwhelming, he can’t even find words to describe it. The idea, the _idea_ of John spending even a _minute_ more than needed in the company of that _fatuous man_ …

Harold rests his head on a wing of the armchair. He didn’t know these things about himself. Not really. He never noticed he was jealous of John’s attention.

Does John know, he wonders?

_Maybe it’s stupid to even articulate such hopes. But, then again, maybe it’s more stupid not to._

 

CHAPTER 7: THE METAMORPHOSES

The library: undisclosed location in New York City  
8:58 a.m.  
June 7th, 2013

In the morning, John walks into the library and finds Finch curled in the armchair, the lights still on. Finch is fast asleep, his head leaning against a wing of the chair. His neck is bent at an angle which would cause discomfort for anyone, let alone a person with a spinal injury.

“Finch.”

John rushes to the science fiction shelf, where he reaches behind the books to fetch Finch’s painkillers. He grabs two blankets on the way back and sets them on the floor, and gently picks up Finch, manhandles him out of his suit jacket, and lays him down on the blankets. He expects Finch to protest.

“I didn’t know you’d identified the location of these, Mr Reese,” Finch says instead, voice strained, pointing at the painkillers.

John unwraps a fentanyl patch, and hands it to him. “I’ll get you some water.”

When he reappears with a glass of water, John finds Bear lying down by Finch’s side, his head just at the height of his hand. He nudges it, and Finch sets his hand on top of Bear’s head. They both close their eyes. Finch’s thumb moves, ever so slightly, over the top of Bear’s head, a familiar and safe gesture.

Responding to an impulse he couldn’t explain, John fetches another blanket, lies down next to Finch and Bear, and covers the three of them. It’s just past nine in the morning and John had a cup of coffee on the way here, but listening to Harold breathing in and out, he closes his eyes and drifts off.

He wakes when Harold’s breathing changes.

“I brought danishes,” John tells him.

Harold makes no sign of getting up. “In a minute.”

From the angle of the light, John would estimate that they have been asleep for forty-five minutes. Harold hasn’t moved at all; the blanket is still spread evenly over them. It’s an old army surplus blanket, boiled wool, only appropriate at the present moment because of the below-seasonal temperature. Underneath them the floor is smooth and plain, bordered by the unremarkable walls and windows of the library, smudged and unkempt. Above them the ceiling seems ever so slightly hazy from the dust in the air. Harold sighs.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Harold says softly.

Were this any other morning, John thinks, he might be able to guess what’s meant by that word, ‘nothing.’ But this morning he feels as hazy as the air in the library, and he doesn’t know.

“You weren’t listening last night,” John comments.

“How did you know?”

“The silence was different,” John says, rolling on his side to face Harold. “I would recognize your silence anywhere.”

Finch folds down the top of the blanket and reaches up to remove his glasses. His glasses, which he’d been wearing all this time. They’re such a part of him that John forgot to take them off, even when Finch had gone to sleep.

“Harold?”

Harold sets down the glasses on the floor on his other side, and, pulling the blanket back over himself, moves closer to John. He’s still lying on his back, but close enough that his shoulder is flush up against John’s chest.

“Harold,” John starts again. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?”

“No.” John tells him, before he even knows it’s true.

“You sounded okay last night.”

“I wasn’t.”

The truth of the statement hits John like too-bright sunlight to someone coming out of the darkness. He hadn’t known that he wasn’t okay. He hadn’t noticed.

*

John Reese went into the army in the midst of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and never gave it a second thought. It was easier to learn to kill people with his emotions shut up inside a impregnable psychological vault, and once that was done, throwing his libido in there as well just seemed… consistent. Being a killing machine isn’t that hard when you’ve switched off all the smiling and the anger and the humanity. Why not switch off the gay as well?

If anything, John is familiar with homosexual sex being used as a threat rather than as a healthy activity. The threat was never carried out, in his case, but it was there. He’s used to thinking that when it is offered, physical affection from men is a method of cowing or controlling, rather than an expression of genuine attraction.

And it is occurring to him now that ever since he joined the army he hasn’t thought of that warped, controlling affection as something unpleasant. He’s only thought of it as a fact of life. Logan’s unwanted attention, last night, was something he had to endure, and the fact that he would have preferred to be home with Harold didn’t factor into anything.

Until now, it never occurred to him that leaving the Agency meant that there were some choices he was allowed to make.

*

When John kisses him, Harold makes a sound that’s helpless and throaty. John pushes him down onto the floor, and they gasp into each other’s mouths. John’s had Harold in his arms before, he has, he knows what it’s like but somehow he’d never _thought_ about it. He’s held Harold up when he couldn’t walk, he’s carried him when he was unconscious, he’s bandaged him when he was hurt, but every time, his mind was busy with other things. He never realized how much he wanted to be close to him. Holding Harold is like clutching to himself safety and warmth, and the knowledge that there is nowhere he’d rather be.

But suddenly Harold is pushing him away.

“John. Did anything happen?”

John reaches down, takes Harold’s hand in his, and strokes it with his thumb. He shakes his head.

Harold clears his throat. “Did anything happen with Logan Pierce?”

“No.”

“You seem to enjoy yourself with him.”

“I didn’t—don’t.”

“John. I…” John sees Harold shut his eyes briefly, as though steeling himself. “I am possessive. I experienced feelings of jealousy yesterday and I am not confident that those feelings will fade. _You should know that_.”

John stares, open-mouthed. Transfixed. He is suddenly, shockingly, _painfully_ aroused.

“Harold.”

“Yes, John?”

“I want to be yours.”

“You…” Flushed, Harold stares up at John without saying anything more. He is panting. Though somehow his shirt, tie, and waistcoat are still immaculate.

“I want to be yours.”

“Yes, you—” Harold draws in a laboured breath. “—mentioned that.”

His tie is lilac, with a subtle pattern in the fabric, and John sits up, straddles Harold, and pulls on the knot, mesmerized. It’s such an intimate, even forbidden, gesture. John’s brain can’t quite process what’s happening, but that won’t stop him from pulling on the buttons of Harold’s shirt, one by one, and then undoing his belt.

“John.”

His eyes are dark and his tone is determined and it all goes straight to John’s cock.

“John, I would be very much reassured if you -“ Harold grabs John’s jaw and makes John look at him. “I would be reassured if you explicitly told me you wanted this.”

John undoes his own belt buckle with his left hand and removes it in one movement. Then he grabs Harold’s hand and pulls it into his pants. And nods.

“ _Tell_ me, John.”

“Yes. _Yes_.”

“Then fetch the contents of the box behind the first aid kit,” Harold commands. “And take your clothes off.”

“Wait, no.”

Harold grabs John’s dick and squeezes. “No?”

“No, now _you_ — ” John’s voice is an octave higher than normal. “Tell me if you want this.”

Harold blinks slowly once, twice. Everything in the room seems to come to a stop, waiting for his reply.

“I’ve… wanted this for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not want this.”

*

The thing about Harold is his unfailing competence. No matter the task, Harold will master it.

It hits John, as he presses his face against Harold’s thigh and waits for instructions, that he's been living his deepest, darkest fantasy for two years now. But it only became real when Harold said the words ‘I am possessive’ out loud.

Harold says, "John." And John opens his mouth. He gives himself over.

 

EPILOGUE

“I suppose we were both right,” says Harold.

John lazily threads his fingers through Harold’s. “We were?”

“You thought Logan had a hidden motive, and I thought he was making a pass at you. We were both right.”

“I suppose.”

“But tell me again what possessed you to accept his offer of a drink, yesterday?”

“I don't like loose ends. Yesterday was just an excuse to get our attention; it was never about wanting to use us as subjects for a novel. Or - I don’t know, maybe it was. In a twisted way. Logan thinks that if he and I were involved, it would be some epic romance/mystery/suspense story, and he could be one of the stars. So I went along with him long enough to know what he actually wanted. I don’t want to get any more surprise text messages from Logan, I don’t like him.”

Suddenly, Harold is squeezing his fingers, and John’s stomach flips and they're rushing towards each other, Harold's mouth covering his. This goes on for some time, but then -

“Harold?” John asks, still panting.

Harold takes John’s fingers out of his mouth but doesn’t open his eyes. “Yes, my — John?”

“What do you think that was about, that woman, wanting to write a book…?”

Harold’s eyes are closed, he is flushed bright red, and his hair is slightly damp. “Apologies,” he says, patting John’s hand. “Apologies, John, I just found out that the person I treasure above all others might, perhaps, treasure me in return. I may not, currently, be at my most intellectually efficient.”

John puts both arms around Harold, hugs him, hard, and mouths feelings he can’t yet say into the fine hair behind Harold’s ear.

"I think -” Harold says. “That if someone were to write a story about us, the story would most certainly be less strange than the truth -"

John shrugs. "It would have to be. Who would believe the part about stealing a baby?"

“Less strange, but more dramatic than the truth.”

“What are you saying, Finch, your life isn’t dramatic enough?”

Finch reaches out, touches his fingertips to John’s hand. “I’m saying that _our_ life, John, does not follow the narrative arc of a novel.”

John doesn’t respond.

“I think an author,” Finch takes his hand off John’s and gestures towards the desk, where The Goldfinch now sits. “Like this one, would be looking to conclude our story with something significantly more operatic than the truth.”

“The truth being?”

“The truth being that our adventure will probably end in paperwork and relocation, and a life filled with activities and experiences that are utterly unremarkable to anyone but ourselves.”

“I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to the quotes from [The Goldfinch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldfinch_\(novel\)) (pages 471, 476-477, 603, and 724, respectively), I used chapter nine of [Maurice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_\(novel\)) as a sort of template for the start of chapter seven. 
> 
> Thanks to Toft and Dodie for expressing an interest in my jealousy thoughts. And by “expressing an interest,” in Dodie’s case, I mean “blatantly manipulating me.” You’re welcome, you weirdo.
> 
> Thanks to meh_guh for beta and characterization thoughts.
> 
> Thanks to Charloween for a wealth of suggestions for previous fic which found their way into this one — the flecks of blue in Finch’s waistcoat particularly stand out — and for responding to my concerns about the surprisingly tedious nature of porn writing with clickbait title suggestions such as
> 
> “You Wouldn't Believe How Much This New York Vigilante Wants To Worship His Partner's Cock!”  
> And  
> “Fifteen Ways John Couldn't Believe How Aroused He Was: Click Here!” 
> 
> The internet would be a sadder place without a Charloween in it.
> 
> Anyway I wrote this with MGMT’s ‘Oracular Spectacular’ on a loop, with occasional listens to the Underground soundtrack (the 2000 Kusturica film - not the currently airing tv show) and Chvrches’s ‘Every Open Eye.’
> 
> Funfact: [the weather in NYC on June 7th 2013](https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNYC/2013/6/7/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=) was indeed below seasonal. I love the internet.
> 
> Funfact numéro deux: the best line in this fic occurred to me while I was reading Venus in Furs. So. There is a moral here: you never know where inspiration is going to come from, and reading is good for you.
> 
> Note: I took out the line "But _this_." just before posting. I then, later on, randomly decided to edit back in. So. If you're re-reading and thinking to yourself "is it just me, or was this not here before?" the answer is "no, it wasn't!"


End file.
